At 29, Renee Reynolds is not where she wants to be, but she is satisfied that she has accomplished part of her goal and is an architect. And while she is working in the field, she is also about to fulfil another dream and that is to become internationally licensed.
If all goes well the former Queen’s College student may very well open her own business in another 10 years, not just focusing on architecture, but also a hint of art.
The Sunday Stabroek caught up with the young professional in her Fort Street, Kingston office located in the Ministry of Public Infrastructure. The ministry employs three architects and she is one of the two women; they work along with engineers who are mostly men.
“It really goes back a long way probably before I even understood what architecture was, because since I was small, I was always building things. I remembered I had a doll house at some point and my mom had given it to one of my cousins and I missed it,” Reynolds said, when asked how she got into the field.
That saw her using Lego and foam blocks and making another doll house; she was about eight or nine years old at the time.
She further shared that around the same time her mom was doing renovations to their home and she had a number of foreign magazines lying around with varying home models which she found amazing.
“I used to go through them obsessively, trace them over, colour them in and add my own rooms,” she said.
But her journey had a more hands-on side as she recalled that her grandfather was a carpenter/mason and they lived with him for a while. Even after they had their own home, he was still an integral part of her life, as he would pick her up from school and keep her until her mother finished working. She believes the time spent with him must have influenced her decision to become an architect.
“As long as I knew him, he was a builder, masonry, carpentry and any fine things in the house he would do that…,” she said.
But even so Reynolds said she believes she always had an affinity with building and designing and she wonders if it was genetic because of him since her mother is a banker and her father is a High Court judge. “It is two completely different things, one is numbers and the other is charisma, argumentative writing and research,” she said of her parents.
She recalled that in school she always did good at Mathematics, English and Literature but while she was good at those subject areas, she never felt the “pull” to pursue a career in accounting, law nor the sciences.
Instead, she did Technical Drawing and she also enjoyed Geography which she says has a lot to do with architecture.
“Looking back, I think doing Geography was one of the more influential things that saw me going into architecture. People might not think that, but architecture and Geography have the same inter-disciplinary approach to the concepts. Architecture pulls a lot of things, you may go into the social… you look at Geography, you look at how people interact with each other and you get a bit of the humanity, all in architecture as one,” she explained.
She further noted that the principles in Geography deal with the natural world and that is what architecture deals with as it is all about making one comfortable in the environment one is in, and Geography understands the environment.
In fact, she got her best A-Level grade in Geography and coupled with that Reynolds also sees herself as being somewhat as artistic which also goes hand in hand with architecture as there must be a creative side.
Following her secondary education, Reynolds took a year off before completing her first degree at the New York Institute of Technology. It actually ran for five years as she did the two-year foundation course and upon completion, she had to reapply to the school to complete the programme to be admitted to get the professional degree. She revealed that she has still not gotten than license and she is currently studying for those exams to become licensed to practice in the US, but she does have a Bachelor of Architecture. She is grateful to well-known architect Albert Rodrigues who has been helping her in the process of becoming licensed by certifying her logged hours in the field.
After completing her degree, she commenced work with the Ministry and the National Trust in 2016 for about eight months before being granted a government scholarship to read for a Master’s Degree in Environmental Design and Engineering at the University College London (UCL). She explained that her master’s had to do with the more technical side of designing a building incorporated a lot of physics which she was not fond of but she “struggled through it.” She knew it was going to be a challenge, but it was one she wanted to give herself and, in the end, she passed with a Merit. Even though she did not enjoy it as much as she did the architecture, she was happy she did it since she now has more knowledge.
“The small group of architects that were there we all had the same kind of struggles with the course because we were more creatively inclined and everyone else already knew how to use the programmes so we were always a little behind… but it was good and I got a distinction on my dissertation,” she said.
Her dissertation focused on Guyana using prefabricating housing and it was about giving squatters a package on which they can build.
“I designed it so that it can be incrementally built, so piece by piece as you get a little small piece you add on, which is how we build. But the problem that government has with squatters is that one it is an unhealthy environment and aesthetically it looks run down. So if you take that concept of how squatters live and how they build and you give them a packaged something that they can build on but when they finish it is safe, it is healthy and it looks good,” she said explaining her final project.
Work at the ministry
Reynolds returned to the ministry of this year and she said while the field is still a bit male-oriented in Guyana she fits in with the guys. However, she is aware that some women have issues in male-dominated jobs in Guyana and she wonders at what point the country is going to “flip the script” so that men will be more respectful to women. She was quick to add though that in her department the men are respectful.
Her work at the ministry entails mostly maintenance of government buildings, fence designs and recently she designed the guard hut that is being constructed in the ministry’s compound. The projects, she said, mostly focus on improving the government buildings around the country.
“On a typical day I would be reviewing drawings or going through bills of quantities. Occasionally I would do construction evaluation where I would go out into the field and see what the guys are up to, whether they are doing the construction as drawn and if it is up to the correct standard,” she said of her work.
She noted that not much designing is done at the ministry as it is mostly just maintenance.
Asked about more women joining the field, Reynolds said, “It is really something you have to enjoy doing because it is not an easy job to do. But I would always encourage women if it is you have an interest go for it, find whatever avenues and get it, whether you go on the job and you learn from an engineer or you learn from another architect…,” she said.
Apart from her job, working Reynolds said would do designs for some persons she knows. She goes out occasionally, but she is mostly at home. She reads a lot and does art when she finds the time. “I am a home body,” she said, laughing, adding that she likes being alone.
In another ten years Reynolds said she hopes to be retired from her 9 to 5 job and probably have her own company. She also wants to own a studio and maybe also get into furniture making.
“I will be doing a lot more art, painting, drawing and just enjoying life but my goal is to retire by 35… I am running out of time, but things can happen. I want to at least retire from an office job,” she added.
Reynolds is the daughter of Justice Brassington Reynolds and Marlyn Carriveau.
